Introduction

The controversy surrounding the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses (the ‘Rushdie affair’) is regarded as a watershed moment for British Muslims. A crucial moment in the shaping and construction of Britain’s Muslims as an indeterminable ‘Other’ in the popular discourses present in both social and political spaces (Poynting and Mason 2007; Allen 2010), its aftermath prompted a shift in consciousness for many British Muslims (Modood 1990a, 1990b). For Werbner (2000), this catalysed the need for British Muslims to engage politically in order to lobby for greater recognition and rights, which in turn gave impetus to embryonic formal Muslim-governmental relations (McLoughlin 2010; Silvestre 2010). It also marked the beginning of what has become a complex and evolving relationship between governmental institutions and politicians on the one hand, and Muslim representative organizations on the other (O’Toole et al. 2013). It is these relationships between Muslims and government, often forged against a backdrop of similar controversies, that form the focus of this paper. In the two decades since Rushdie, a number of similarly resonant controversies

have emerged: the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Denmark; satirical cartoons in France’s Charlie Hebdo; the Lars Vilk’s Dog Muhammad cartoons in Norway; and

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 11, 1852-1867, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.941893

films by Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh and politician Geert Wilders, respectively. While stark differences exist between all of them, a clear chronological lineage can be traced from the Rushdie affair. Each controversy has typically seen a proliferation of media images showing Muslims protesting, typically aggressively, against a cultural product perceived as ‘Western’. Likewise, each has ignited debates about the boundaries between free speech and hate speech. Conversely, each has cemented the need for dialogue, diplomacy and cooperation between governments and Muslims, and have been important in shaping Muslim communities’ intergovernmental relationships. McLoughlin (2004, 2010) emphasized the importance of the Rushdie affair in

prompting new government initiatives to liaise with British Muslims directly. Indeed, it was in the immediate fallout from this that the Conservative British Home Secretary Michael Howard asked Muslims leaders to found a new body in order to speak with a unified voice. This potentially essentializing approach was also reflected in the New Labour government’s use of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) as a single, professionalized representative body for British Muslims (McLoughlin 2010). Since then, there has been a move away from single representative bodies by government, driven by the increased scrutiny of those groups and different governments’ dissatisfaction with a lack of support for its policies (Birt 2006). Towards the end of the New Labour era, government became inclined to choosing its Muslim partners depending on the nature of whatever policies it was seeking to address, without worrying about how ‘representative’ those might be. This shift has continued with the current Coalition government. Muslim organizations working with government to represent Muslim interests today, eschew the notion that they are truly ‘representative’ and acknowledge that their links to Muslim communities at a local level can be loose. Nonetheless, the heterogeneous set of Muslim groups currently liaising with the Coalition government must negotiate the legacy of past failed attempts of representation. As their seat at the decision-making table is not guaranteed, they can find themselves caught between representing community perspectives accurately and cooperating with government agendas that impact upon Muslim ‘communities’ (Brown 2008; Allen and Guru 2012; O’Toole et al. 2012). The posting of a fourteen-minute video titled ‘Innocence of Muslims’ on the

YouTube website was to bring these dilemmas to the fore. As with Rushdie, the video was roundly condemned for denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Resonating with the pattern of preceding controversies, protests duly took place around the world, some of which were violent. A preliminary survey of British newspapers suggests that around seventy-five people died worldwide as a result of the protests, with a further 650 being injured.1 However, while the worldwide protests resonated with those against Rushdie decades beforehand, aside from a few provocative protests engineered by an extremely small number of British Muslims, the response to the video in Britain was markedly different – and fuelled by a variety of political concerns. Unlike the Rushdie affair, during which significant numbers of British Muslims protested, some choosing to burn copies of the book or voice support for the Iranian fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie, the response to ‘Innocence of Muslims’ was less incendiary. Instead of high-profile protests, most prominent British

Racial Studies 1853

Chris Allen and Arshad Isakjee

(Received 25 July 2013; accepted 26 June 2014)

In September 2012, a video entitled ‘Innocence of Muslims’ was uploaded to YouTube. The fourteen-minute clip featured actors playing the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and wives, and while production values were amateurish, aided by airings on Egyptian national television and others elsewhere, the video went viral. Recalling the Rushdie affair two decades beforehand, angry protests took place across the world. In the UK, the response from Muslims was markedly different. This article traces the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ affair from the eyes of those involved in formal Muslim-governmental relations. It explores what the new controversy tells us about the representation of Muslim communities in the process of political engagement since the Rushdie affair. It considers the experiential disconnect that exists between Muslim and political actors in contemporary Britain before exploring three important political factors – the cultural, representational and geopolitical – that influence and impact upon Muslim-governmental relations.